a, Opinion

Poorly publicized, poorly timed, poorly attended

On March 1, Christopher Manfredi, the Dean of arts, chaired the first of four meetings, part of the administration’s Open Forum to debate the limits of free expression and peaceful assembly on campus. Despite the clear importance of these issues to students, the first meeting only had just over 30 people in attendance.

The Tribune is disappointed at such a low turnout. The Open Forum is a rare chance for student concerns to be heard, and it is a shame if students miss these opportunities to voice their opinions in a way that does not involve an occupation. Just two weeks ago, students camped out in the offices of the James Administration Building hoping to get the attention of the administrators. It seems inconsistent that they would go through all the effort to do that, but not to turn up to talk about the issues in a more composed environment.

However, the Open Forum offers far less to students than it should. In terms of policy, it will have a trifling effect. The administration has already introduced the provisional protocol, a strict set of limits on what forms of political protest the university is prepared to tolerate. Many of the terms of the provisional protocol are, as Principal Heather Munroe-Blum pointed out at the recent senate meeting, “not negotiable,” and those that are theoretically negotiable will remain unchanged at least until Dean Manfredi releases his report on the Open Forum. Dean Manfredi’s report is not due until Oct. 8—almost ten months after the release of the Jutras Report. This effectively leaves the provisional protocol in place for the rest of the academic year, potentially preventing any protest that the administration would prefer not to deal with. Students can therefore not expect to have an impact on deciding the limits of their freedom of expression; it has already been decided for them.

Furthermore, the first meeting was poorly publicized, and poorly timed. Both of these mistakes are entirely inexcusable. The meeting was poorly advertised and relied on only one email to the listserv, and a blog on the McGill website.

 This is hardly going to generate mass participation. The timing was also, quite frankly, dreadful. The first meeting of the Open Forum was staged in the middle of a Thursday afternoon when many people either had classes to attend or upcoming midterms to study for. The Tribune believes that because the Jutras Report—the inquiry that first recommended the Open Forum—came out almost four months ago, there is no reason at all for its meetings to be happening this late in the semester. Indeed, it is also unacceptable to use the fact that the debate is available to watch online as an excuse. Watching the debate online at a more suitable time in the student schedule is akin to auditing a lecture: it does not constitute a chance for active participation.

The Tribune hopes the administration will make a better effort at publicizing the next meeting. The best way to do so is to prove that what is said in the Open Forum will make a difference, or at the very least be taken into account. However, this will also require active participation on the part of students. As relations between students and the administration remain strained, these goals will be difficult, but necessary to achieve.

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